Profile: Dasha Zhukova+Mollie Dent-Brocklehurst
Published: December 1, 2008
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Zhukova, a 27-year-old Russian heiress and burgeoning collector who is based in London, came across the former Bakhmetevsky bus garage, designed in 1926 by the architect Konstantin Melnikov, and oversaw its restoration. Early this year, she enlisted the London-based independent curator Dent-Brocklehurst, 39, to coordinate the programming. Their cosmopolitan partnership mirrors perfectly the philosophy of the GCCC. “I want to bring the best international contemporary art to the Garage to help make Moscow as important an art world center as London and New York,” Zhukova explains. “The aim is to attract new audiences, especially young people. There are not many places here for people to hang out informally and see great art at the same time.” When completed, the Garage will offer facilities for films, lectures and symposia as well as exhibition spaces. A bookshop and café are already up and running. The pair collaborate closely on setting the GCCC’s goals and have made education a priority. They planned the inaugural exhibition, one part of the first Moscow retrospective of Ilya and Emilia Kabakov. “There was skepticism before the opening about what could be achieved,” says the Moscow publisher and collector Ellen Verbeek. “But the result was the most beautiful modern-art exhibition Moscow has ever seen. And it brought an interesting mix of the international art world and Moscow tusovka [in crowd].” Russia’s oligarchs are the new force in the multibillion-dollar art market. As the daughter of the oil baron Alexander Zhukova and companion of another oligarch, the 41-year-old Roman Abramovich, whose fortune was estimated by Forbes at $23.5 billion in March, Zhukova has all the right connections to step into the role of patronage princess. Dent-Brocklehurst, who began her career at Sotheby’s and spent 10 years working for the dealer Larry Gagosian, first in New York and then as director of his London gallery, provides the contemporary-art world cred and contacts. As an independent curator, Dent-Brocklehurst has produced annual sculpture shows on the grounds of the 12th-century Sudeley Castle, her family’s estate. So far, reaction from some of Moscow’s contemporary dealers has been positive, although curious. “A private art center of such a scale and financing—this is magnificent,” says Sergei Khripun, the assistant director of XL Gallery. “The great question is, What’s next?” Zhukova and Dent-Brocklehurst already have an answer: an exhibition of pieces from the collection of François Pinault and a video project curated by Hans-Ulrich Obrist, Serpentine Gallery’s co-director of exhibitions, that will project the work of several international artists on a big screen in central Moscow. And, says Dent-Brocklehurst, “we are in conversations with an artist to commission a site-specific piece,” like the ones that have appeared in the Tate’s Turbine Hall. Moscow’s tusovka is watching the GCCC. “The space is unique,” says the collector Delya Allakhverdova. “The concept to conduct exhibitions together with education programs is needed in Russia.” Will the Garage become a Moscow MoMA with its own collection, or will it focus on rotating exhibitions, like the Serpentine? Dent-Brocklehurst and Zhukova will surely come up with a wholly unexpected model. "Dasha Zhukova + Mollie Dent-Brocklehurst" originally appeared in the December 2008 issue of Art+Auction. For a complete list of articles from this issue available on ARTINFO, see Art+Auction's December 2008 Table of Contents.
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